Apple Designer Jony Ive Ordered Boxes Of These Nike Sport Watches

Apple design chief Jony Ive has long had an interest in watches.
Besides owning many high-end models himself, he had his team
visit watch factories and ordered boxes of a sports watch made by
Nike Inc. in
the mid-2000s, said Wilson, who was then Nike’s creative
director.

The "Wilson" Bloomberg referred to is Scott Wilson. Wilson led
one of the first big Kickstarter
successes with the TikTok
and LunaTik, which were watchbands designed for the small
touchscreen iPod
Nano. He's the creative director of design studio MNML.

We emailed him to find out which watches Ive bought. He told us:

Well, he didn't buy them. We just gave them to them as designer
bro deals. He and others in the design group just requested them
and we sent them a ton of Nike Presto Digital Bracelets and the
aluminum Oregon Series Alti-Compass watches. Was flattered that
they were requesting them. Thought they were only personal
requests but their materials guy followed up with many questions
on the materials and processes. This meshes up with their
research in watch manufacturing during that timeframe which has
been documented in previous stories. They definitely drew upon
watch industry techniques and manufacturing in their products
since the first iPhone.
Interesting that it may come full circle to an actual iWatch at
some point.

These Nike designs were circa 2002-2004.

He included the watches, which we've published below. It's
interesting that Ive and his team have been thinking about this
stuff for a long time.